The desk in the Vice President's Ceremonial Office in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, colloquially known as the Theodore Roosevelt desk, is a large mahogany pedestal desk in the collection of the White House. It is the first of six desks that have been used by U.S. presidents in the Oval Office. Since 1961, it has been used as the desk of the U.S. Vice President.
In 1903, the desk was made to a design by Charles Follen McKim for the newly constructed West Wing, then called the Executive Office Building, one of several pieces of furniture made specifically for the new interior spaces. In 1929, the desk survived a major fire in the West Wing and was placed in storage for over a decade. The desk was replaced by the Hoover desk in the Oval Office until after Franklin D. Roosevelt's death. The next two presidents, Harry S. Truman and Dwight D. Eisenhower, returned the Theodore Roosevelt desk to the Oval Office.
After briefly using this desk in the Oval Office, John F. Kennedy switched to the Resolute desk and moved the Theodore Roosevelt desk to the Vice President's Ceremonial Office. Richard Nixon used this desk in his "working office" in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, where some of the Watergate tapes were recorded by microphones attached to it. After Nixon resigned, the desk was moved back to the Vice President's Ceremonial Office, where it has been used by every Vice President since. Many of past users of the desk have signed their names on the bottom of the center drawer.
Design and markings
The Theodore Roosevelt desk is a mahogany pedestal desk and is owned by the White House."Memo, Frank Pagnotta to Robert Hartmann" Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library. Gerald R. Ford Presidential Handwriting File, retrieved January 25, 2017Serratore, Angela. The presidential desk: A brief history. Curbed. November 8, 2016. Retrieved December 6, 2020. The high desk has a workspace which measures wide and deep. The understated design is marked by elegant and masculine lines and is detailed with brass pulls. There are two alterations to the desk that both took place during the Nixon administration. A hole was drilled in the top so phone cords could be threaded through the desk out of sight, and a lock was placed on the left hand drawer to secure a recording device located there.Room 180. George W Bush whitehouse.gov archives. Retrieved December 3, 2020. The desk was described in a 1949 article in Parade Magazine as being "time-worn, fire-scarred, [and] repainted".The President's Desk. Parade magazine. May 22, 1949. Retrieved December 5, 2020.
Beginning in the 1940s, each user of the desk signed the interior of the center drawer at the end of their term in office.Vice President's Ceremonial Office. George W Bush whitehouse.gov archives. Retrieved December 3, 2020. In 1974, it was noted in a memo that the signatures of Truman, Eisenhower, and Johnson, as well as Truman and Eisenhower's initials, were located in this drawer. Since then, the drawer has been signed by vice presidents Nelson Rockefeller, Walter Mondale, George H. W. Bush, Dan Quayle, Al Gore, Dick Cheney, Joe Biden, Mike Pence, and Kamala Harris.Mehta, Seema. Harris joins a decades-old tradition for vice presidents in her final days in office. LA Times. January 16, 2025. Retrieved January 16, 2025.
History
1902 White House renovation
In 1901, Vice President Theodore Roosevelt became President of the United States following the assassination of incumbent president William McKinley. Upon moving into the White House, the Roosevelts found the Victorian interiors crowded and dingy and generally too small for their large family.WHITE HOUSE. An archive of drawings and blue prints from Davenport Co. and McKim, Mead & White, 1902. Christie's. December 3, 2007. Retrieved December 4, 2020.The East and West Wings of the White House: history in architecture and building. White House Historical Association. Retrieved December 4, 2020. In 1902, a major renovation of the White House began to remove this Victoriana and bring the building to modern standards. Roosevelt's wife, Edith Roosevelt, worked with Charles Follen McKim of McKim, Mead, and White to achieve this renovation, which included the construction of a new Executive Office Building, now known as the West Wing.Roosevelt, Edith Kermit Carow. Theodore Roosevelt Center. Dickinson State University. Retrieved December 4, 2020The White House Building. White House. Retrieved December 4, 2020.Restoration. p. 7. As part of this renovation, all furniture in the White House was replaced with new pieces, including this desk.Monkman, Betty C. The White House Collection: The Beaux Arts Furnishing of 1902. White House Historical Association. Retrieved December 4, 2020 This refurnishing was done with the stated aim to "design and furnish the interior in harmony with its neoclassical exterior architecture, in order that it would not be subject to changing fashion."
These new furnishings were part of a widespread attempt to develop a national design identity which had been growing since the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition. Betty C. Monkman explained through the White House Historical Association that at this time, "Americans looked back to the nation's origins and an idealized past and sought representative antiques or reproductions of furnishings from the earliest periods of the country's history. Colonial Revival furnishings and copies of English and French neoclassical styles were selected for rooms at the same time that a growing emphasis on lighter spaces and a reaction away from pattern in wallpaper, fabrics, and carpets—and from a certain busyness and 'artistic' clutter".
A pamphlet explaining the renovations of the White House from the time claimed that before this new set of furniture was purchased, there was "an inequality in the furniture of the whole house (owing to the unwillingness and piecemeal manner with which Congress votes any moneys for its decoration) which destroys its effect as a comfortable dwelling."Restoration. pp. 45–46. The pamphlet extolled the new furniture and interiors with, "It is to be hoped that Congress will not always consider the furniture of the President's House as the scapegoat of all sumptuary and aristocratic sins, and that we shall soon be able to introduce strangers not only to a comfortable and well-appointed, but to a properly served and nicely kept, Presidential Mansion."
In 1902, planning for the interiors began in earnest for the executive offices, state rooms, and family spaces. Because of delays in funds appropriation from Congress, the project had less than six months for the interiors to be designed, built, and installed. The goal was to finish the spaces for the Winter 1903 social season. Mrs. Roosevelt was very hands on with the redesign of the White House and new office building and all fabrics and furniture had to be approved by her.
The budget for all of the furniture was $10,000, . A total of $14,054.77, , was actually spent on "furniture, carpets, rugs, electric lighting and other fixtures". Construction began on June 20, 1902,Restoration. pp. 11–13 and wrapped up on September 29. The building was occupied in the middle of October.Restoration. p. 13.
In 1903, the desk, as well as all other furniture in the Executive Office Building, was designed by McKim and built by furniture-maker A. H. Davenport and Company in Boston, Massachusetts.The President's Office, Theodore Roosevelt Administration. White House Historical Association. Retrieved December 4, 2020 Davenport worked closely with McKim to create furniture that worked within their concept and may have contributed design ideas as well.
Early use and 1929 fire The desk was first used by Roosevelt in his Executive Office, in the location where the Roosevelt Room is found in the modern West Wing.Tour the West Wing. Barack Obama whitehouse.gov archives. Retrieved December 4, 2020.Hess, Stephen. "What Now? The Oval Office". Brookings Institution. January 8, 2009. Retrieved December 4, 2020. Roosevelt's successor, President William Howard Taft, expanded the Executive Office Building further and added its first Oval Office. He moved the Theodore Roosevelt desk into the new space, called the "President's Office" or "Executive Office" at the time, and paired it with green burlap wall coverings, brass light fixtures, and additional mahogany furniture.Postcard view of the Oval Office. White House Historical Association. Retrieved December 4, 2020 The desk was the first one to be used in the Oval Office and remained in the room for twenty years, being used by Presidents Woodrow Wilson, Warren G. Harding, Calvin Coolidge, and Herbert Hoover. In March 1929, Hoover notably had the first telephone installed in the Oval Office on this desk.Herbert Hoover has telephone installed in Oval Office. History. March 26, 2020. Retrieved December 6, 2020.
The West Wing suffered a major fire on December 24, 1929, during Herbert Hoover's presidency. This four-alarm fire was the most destructive to strike the White House since the Burning of Washington 115 years earlier.Treese, Joel D. Phifer, Evan. The Christmas Eve West Wing Fire of 1929. White House Historical Association. Retrieved June 4, 2020"Fire Wrecks The White House Offices; Hoover Rushes from Party to Watch it; Aides Brave Smoke to save his papers". The New York Times. December 25, 1929. Retrieved December 5, 2020. The fire was noticed at approximately 8 p.m. by White House messenger Charlie Williamson, and immediate action was taken to save items in the building. Chief Usher Ike Hoover, the president's son Allan Hoover, the president's personal secretaries Lawrence Richey and George Akerson, and some Secret Service agents crawled into the building through a window just to the left of the Theodore Roosevelt desk.
The first things they saved were current papers, followed by completely clearing the top of the desk and removing the drawers which were passed through the windows to safety."President Chooses White House Study for Use as Office". The New York Times. December 26, 1929. Retrieved December 5, 2020. They then began removing steel cabinets full of files, the chair at the president's desk, and the presidential flag. They later saved the chairs the Cabinet used at cabinet meetings and more documents. All of these valuable objects and papers, including the Roosevelt desk drawers, were left on the White House Lawn and guarded all night by 150 infantrymen from the local Washington barracks. Akerson later stated that all historically and sentimentally valuable items in the president's office were saved.
While the desk drawers and their contents had been moved safely out of the building, the main body of the desk was still at risk, especially to water damage from the fire hoses on the freezing cold night. Ike Hoover acquired the tarpaulin awning that covered the White House's east entrance for the upcoming New Years Day reception and used it to cover and protect the desk. The fire was put out by approximately 10:30 p.m. leaving the executive offices, roof, attic, and floors heavily damaged and the press room completely ruined.
After the fire, President Hoover immediately started using the White House's Lincoln Study to conduct business in, and after a few days moved his official offices to what is now the Vice President's Ceremonial Office. No insurance had been taken out on the White House, so a special appropriation from Congress had to be made to repair the building. A contract was awarded on January 4, 1930, to Charles H. Tompkins Co. to do the repair work and it was completed on April 14 of the same year. The new Oval Office was built slightly larger and in the Colonial Revival style.President Hoover's Executive Office Suite. Grand Rapids Historical Commission. Grand Rapids Spectator. June 28, 1930. Retrieved December 5, 2020